City officials should have been forthcoming about a $500 million shortfall over the city’s plans for a commuter rail project, two key City Councilmen said this afternoon.

City Council chairman Todd Apo and Councilman Charles Djou were unhappy that city officials did not release a May 1 draft report to them, but said the project should move forward.
The report was the focus of a page one story in The Advertiser today after it was obtained by two rail opponents, using the Freedom of Information Act.
“If we’re going to do rail, we want to make sure we do it right,” Djou said. “And doing it right means an open, honest process – everybody’s in agreement with that. But I think the integrity of the process breaks down when the administration tells the public and Honolulu City Council one thing and releases a document to the feds in Washington D.C. saying something quite different.”
At a separate, simultaneous press conference today, city transportation director Wayne Yoshioka said the city did nothing wrong in not disclosing the May 1 report that said the city’s transit-tax revenue will fall $500 million short of what is needed to complete the proposed $5.3 billion elevated commuter line.
Yoshioka said the May 1 report was not final and an upcoming September report will address the $500 million shortfall.
U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, (D-Hawaii), said today that he is worried about the apparent lack of transparency in the running of the rail project.
Abercrombie said he fears that opponents will have an opportunity to kill the rail project because of the way it is being managed.
“I’m concerned the project is going to be Supperferried,” Abercrombie said in reference to the demise of the Hawaii Superferry, a high-speed, inter-island shuttle service. The Superferry left the state after a court ruled it had not completed required environmental studies.
The city today released a statement from federal transit administrator Peter Rogoff, saying, "Today, The Honolulu Advertiser Newspaper published a story highlighting information from an outdated May 1st financial report ... That report no longer reflects the city's financial plan for the project."
Today's page one story in The Advertiser quoted Toru Hamayasu, deputy director of the Honolulu Department of Transportation Services, as saying the May 1 report was "an outdated report and no longer accurate."
The city has not released an updated report that it has and said it will not release the new report until it is finalized.